Episode 109: The Rise of APIs with Ann Boyd at Stoplight

Mar 13

An Application Programming Interface, commonly referred to as an API, is a mechanism that allows two software applications to communicate with each other. APIs have traditionally been relegated to the developers of most companies and were often an afterthought when founders began working on their concept.

Things are changing, and APIs are becoming more important than ever before. As Ann Boyd, CMO at Stoplight, says, thinking about how your product is going to connect with the world from the start will get the product to market faster, with better functionality.

A new way of doing business

Ann has been in the technology space for well over 20 years, with an initial background in PR and corporate communications. She expanded into focusing on branding and media, where she dove into the intersection of traditional ways of doing business with new, more modern ways of doing business.

With her deep understanding of how technology was shifting the ways traditional media interacted with companies, and her experience in brand leadership roles, she landed the CMO position at Stoplight in early 2021.

The company was ready to build a market presence and gain traction relating to its product offering, which is a platform that empowers users to design, test, mock and document APIs with a design-first approach.

Ann’s communication background made her the perfect fit for the job because they had to educate the public about what they did with APIs, which was certainly not a mainstream topic. She set out to tell the story of the company, which helped increase subscriptions for its services.

Starting with developers

Because of the technical nature of APIs, it was only natural that interest in the Stoplight platform would start with the developer community. As the platform grew in popularity with developers, corporations started looking at ways to manage the workflow of their software development and the sprawl of technology in their organizations.

That’s when APIs became less of an afterthought. The traditional development cycle would be to build a software product, then figure out how that product would interact with other software. With the Stoplight platform, that software interaction could be planned, built and documented from the beginning, which could propel a business forward much quicker than before.

The double-edged challenge

From a marketing and sales perspective, there are some challenges facing Ann and her team in telling the story of a technical platform that relates to both developers and people who lead product development teams. It creates two completely different lanes, one where the developers are champions of their platform, and the other where a company is looking to undo an underdeveloped or poorly planned product through the implementation of APIs.

The way Ann has taken on that challenge is to create communication materials that can work either way. The company’s technical materials have always been very popular and a main driver of its growth and success. She and her team had to take that technical material and translate it into language that is more accessible to people who come from a less technical background.

The API-first approach

An interesting trend Ann has seen at Stoplight is people using their platform more often to build products and entire businesses around the value proposition of having an API at the core. Many times, a founder or the head of a company will have a specific technical skill or expertise that they want to turn into a product.

Starting with an API at the core of their product development can be a new and different way of approaching that product development. It is a more open-minded way of thinking about the business in terms of how it connects with the rest of the world. Ann says that this way of thinking is essential in today’s world, and not many businesses can afford to be isolated and completely closed off.

Different connections

Another consideration Ann and her team have to keep in mind is the different types of connections businesses use APIs for. They have to look at what connections their customers are trying to create and who the developers are who will be consuming those APIs.

In many cases, they have customers who deal only in internal-to-internal connections. There might be different systems within the company and legacy software that have been built over time that the company needs to connect.

Other customers may be looking to connect outside of the company with specific integrations, or even multiple connections to a single platform. She has to be aware of all those types of use cases to get the right messaging out to the right people to help the business grow and thrive.

The rise of generative AI

The splash that generative AI tools, like Chat GPT, have made has not been lost on Ann, and she and her team are exploring the possibilities that AI tools can bring to the table today and into the future. She sees a time when marketers can use AI to streamline their communications and their content creation processes.

However, she sees the world of AI as still in its infancy, and she’s hesitant to declare that it is going to completely change the way we look at APIs and software interconnectivity. There are certainly going to be some changes brought on through generative AI, but, as she puts it, “I don’t think anyone is going to lose their job immediately.”

The subscription challenge

As a subscription company, Ann faces the challenges all subscription companies face. The company has a free tier for new customers, followed by several paid levels based on usage.

They are constantly looking at new ways to get more paid users through different subscription models. As a customer’s company grows, they may want to upgrade to more usage or add more seats. The Stoplight team is looking at the different ways they can accommodate users with different paid levels and different parameters that can be used to trigger upgrade invitations.

Their sales process is still hands-on when it comes to enterprise accounts, and they continue to run trials to make the process as efficient and customer-friendly as it can be.